Tag Archives: Indiana

Indiana State Fair 2023 Photos, Part 9 of 9: The Year in Miscellany

September 29, 2023 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Anne curled up inside a yellow wheel on a giant green tractor.

Anne all ready to nap inside a tractor big enough to hold her.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides, cooking demos, concerts by musicians either nearly or formerly popular, and farm animals competing for cash prizes without their knowledge. My wife Anne and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context…

It all comes down to this: all the other photos we took that were fit to share but didn’t lend themselves to themed galleries. Enjoy!

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Indiana State Fair 2023 Photos, Part 8 of 9: The Year in Antiques

September 28, 2023 By in Comics/Lit, Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
three old comics in a vitrine.

Blasts from comics’ past: Gold Key’s Dark Shadows #3, dated November 1969, with a photo cover; Dell’s Four Color Comics #510 from 1953, art by Sam Savitt; and, the only one I own a reprint of, Amazing Spider-Man #11, dated April 1964, with art of course by Steve Ditko.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides, cooking demos, concerts by musicians either nearly or formerly popular, and farm animals competing for cash prizes without their knowledge. My wife Anne and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context…

One of the fair’s regular features is the antiques competition, displayed on the second floor of the Indiana Arts Building. I’ve never understood how it works, as there’s no “roadshow” involved per se. Step One: contestants bring in ancient items they unearthed somewhere. Step Three: prize ribbons are placed next to some of them. Nothing on display anywhere in the building explains Step Two. IYKYK, I suppose.

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Indiana State Fair 2023 Photos, Part 7 of 9: The Year in Animals

September 21, 2023 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
A caged rooster with an indignant expression.

Most of this mini-gallery looks as if it should be set to the tune of Sarah McLachlan’s “Angel”.

Lest you thought we forgot about the fair, if you were following along before Dragon Con erupted and overtook our free time and hearts…

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides, cooking demos, concerts by musicians either nearly or formerly popular, and farm animals competing for cash prizes without their knowledge. My wife Anne and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context…

We don’t often go out of our way to see animals at the fair, but lots of Hoosier families love to see ’em. Last year we encountered more critters than we’d expected when we learned Expo Hall had been turned into a small-animal pavilion. We thought that was a one-time accommodation while one of the barns underwent major renovation, but no. The former hot spot for rural hard-sells and party-dip mixes was lined with cages again — not packed with them, mind you, given all the dead space we saw, but the place housed more than a few. Once again all the home-improvement contractors, specialty businesses, and sub-Ronco invention hucksters were relocated to the Ag/Hort Building, which accepted this influx of tenants with a new sign rebranding it as The Mercantile, which sounds like an homage to the Olesons’ store on Little House on the Prairie.

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Indiana State Fair 2023 Photos, Part 6 of 9: The Year in Art, 2-D Division

August 29, 2023 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
A pink-haired manga-style girl in a black robe. Behind her is a collage of black-and-white panels from her manga "Spy x Family".

Anya Forger from the manga Spy x Family.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides, cooking demos, concerts by musicians either nearly or formerly popular, and farm animals competing for cash prizes without their knowledge. My wife Anne and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context…

…and wow, did a lot of art stop me in my tracks this year. We’ve shown some pieces done in Lego and in other sculpture media. Here’s more art but of the imagery-on-flat-papers-and-canvases variety, from artists of many ages!

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Indiana State Fair 2023 Photos, Part 5 of 9: The Year in Art, 3-D Division

August 29, 2023 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
A quasi-stained glass sculpture of Deadpool's upper half. He has his swords on his back. His hands are cupped in a heart shape.

Glass Deadpool loves you!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides, cooking demos, concerts by musicians either nearly or formerly popular, and farm animals competing for cash prizes without their knowledge. My wife Anne and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context…

…and as we discussed last chapter, we are now “enjoy the exhibit halls more than the carnival rides” years old. Beyond all those Lego kits and original creations, sculpture and dioramas came in other media and forms throughout the fairground art competitions.

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Indiana State Fair 2023 Photos, Part 4 of 9: The Year in Lego

August 27, 2023 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
a massive Lego black Star Desroyer, which had to have taken a few thousand bricks.

Lego Eclipse-class Super Star Destroyer, which first appeared in the Star Wars Expanded Universe graphic novel Dark Empire.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides, cooking demos, concerts by musicians either nearly or formerly popular, and farm animals competing for cash prizes without their knowledge. My wife Anne and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context…

When we were kids, the Midway’s amusement-park rides and rigged carnival games were the most important part of the fair. The adults who brought us to the fair wanted to see the exhibits a lot more than we did. We’re now older than they were at the time, and have come to enjoy the opportunities for art appreciation across the fairground exhibit halls. It’s fun seeing the latest round of multimedia works from artists of all ages, skill levels, and facilitating organizations, be they 4-H or local collectives. One of the commonest media among the younger demos is Lego, that blessed sculptor’s tool that’s rigid and flexible, comes with instructions and lends itself to freewheeling flights of fancy.

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Indiana State Fair 2023 Photos, Part 3 of 9: The Year of Basketball

August 27, 2023 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
One side of the Midway's gateway arch surrounded by basketballs, greenery, and one creepy clown head.

A veritable garden of basketballs growing at the Midway entrance, guarded by a creepy clown head.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides, cooking demos, concerts by musicians either nearly or formerly popular, and farm animals competing for cash prizes without their knowledge. My wife Anne and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context…

As we mentioned last time, this year’s fair theme was The Year of Basketball. We aren’t sports fans, but we realize we’re vastly outnumbered in this state. I’ve seen a few basketball films, we attended a Pacers game exactly once, and a high school buddy once took me to an early-’90s Butler/Purdue game where the players spent more time beating on each other than shooting the ball. Otherwise, this chapter was assembled for You, The Viewers At Home, or at least those among you who can better appreciate the exhibits and nods than we did. At least we got to see some authentic props from one film we’ve seen, so there’s that.

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Indiana State Fair 2023 Photos, Part 2 of 9: The Year in Food Art

August 26, 2023 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Cheese sculpture! Refer to caption.

Apropos of Indiana, a cheese sculpture of a cow dunking a basketball, much as one might dunk a donut in her milk.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides, cooking demos, concerts by musicians either nearly or formerly popular, and farm animals competing for cash prizes without their knowledge. My wife Anne and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context…

Our favorite part is the new food, but some of their most ingenious uses of food are available neither for purchase nor consumption. Exhibit A: the annual cheese sculpture at the Agricultural & Horticultural Building. Each year sculptor Sarah Kaufmann spends days carving hundreds of pounds of cheese into recognizable, cartoony shapes. This year Kaufmann couldn’t make it; in her place the State Fair welcomed food artist Nancy Baker, whose works have appeared in such TV competitions as Food Network’s Halloween Wars and Disney+’s Foodtastic (hosted by Nope‘s Keke Palmer), and who in an episode of The Kelly Clarkson Show graciously made a pie with her celebrity interviewer’s face on it.

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Indiana State Fair 2023 Photos, Part 1: Our Year in Food

August 20, 2023 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Me holding a Nutellephant Ear.

It’s a Nutellaphant Ear! You’ll understand why I had to text a photo to coworkers live from the scene.

It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides, cooking demos, concerts by musicians either nearly or formerly popular, and farm animals competing for cash prizes without their knowledge. My wife Anne and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context.

Most years, we’re all about the food. On Thursdays vendors are encouraged to offer $3 specials, typically a bite-sized portion of an existing menu item or a chintzy, non-special drink. Our favorite part is the “Taste of the Fair” competition, in which vendors showcase ostensibly new dishes in hopes of enticing foodies and/or impressing attendees who seek more to fair-life than eating the same corn dog again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) The TotF lineup is announced weeks in advance so everyone can plan their meals and experiments accordingly. If you didn’t feel like wandering the fairgrounds in search of the new items, fans could pick up a handy Taste of the Fair participants’ map at the Indiana State Police information booth. (This map was nowhere on their website, nor did State Fair officials bother to wake up their app, which hasn’t been updated since 2021. The map was an exclusively in-person freebie.)

Of the 30 Taste of the Fair contestants, we tried 11 of them across an 8-hour time span divided into two trips (long story) and walked off several of those cumulative calories doing laps around the fairgrounds. In time-honored internet listicle tradition, we’ve gone to the trouble of ranking them against each other. Enjoy!

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Doughnuts & Dragons Sails Into the West

July 29, 2023 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Six donuts in a white box. See caption.

Our last breakfast, as it were: chocolate long john, cinnamon braid, key lime pie, white chocolate raspberry, strawberry shortcake, and Butterbeer (vanilla and cream soda cake donut with butterscotch icing).

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: this isn’t officially a foodie blog, but restaurants are among the many and varied subjects we touch upon, as we refuse to focus on a singular topic and don’t care one bit about the damage done to our SEO standings. Whether they’ve enlivened our annual road trips, featured in our wedding anniversary celebrations, given us something to do on Super Bowl Sunday, or simply welcomed us in for one-time tryouts, restaurants are a treasured aspect of our travel experiences, in other states as well as around our own hometown of Indianapolis. This weekend we bade farewell to another creative establishment from a past entry.

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Indiana Comic Convention 2023 Photos, Part 2 of 2: Actors and Activities!

May 7, 2023 By in Conventions & Events Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Me doing jazz hands with Grant Gustin.

It’s Grant Gustin! With The Flash soon coming to a close on The CW, TV’s Barry Allen is finally hitting the Midwest convention circuit.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! This weekend my wife Anne and I attended the ninth edition of the Indiana Comic Convention at the Indiana Convention Center in scenic downtown Indianapolis. They refrain from calling themselves “Indiana Comic Con” on paper for tiresome legal reasons that aren’t their fault, but to us they’ll always be Indiana Comic Con.

ICC 2023 was another opportunity to look at walls covered with old comics, meet people who create reading matter, boggle at toy displays, respect the anime fandom whose population dwarfs us older generations, and find space to breathe among or away from those cheerfully ever-growing crowds. Although the showrunners reserved less space than they did for last year’s edition — in fact, they moved the show back to the halls where the inaugural edition was held back in 2014 — geek life nevertheless thrived in abundance…

…relatively speaking. The smaller square footage meant noticeably fewer vendors than last year. In hindsight we probably didn’t need weekend passes, but we’d taken advantage of an early February sale that got us in Friday and Saturday (we almost never go on Sundays) for a mere five bucks less than what folks were paying for Saturday-only passes day-of at the door. So we did some stuff, but not as much as usual.

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Indiana Comic Convention 2023 Photos, Part 1 of 2: Cosplay!

May 6, 2023 By in Conventions & Events Tags: , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments
Three Mandalorian costumes styled like Woody, Jessie and Buzz from the "Toy Story" series.

Mando, meet Andy’s room. Andy, Mando. Sheriff Woody, Jessie and Buzz Lightyear a la Mandalore.

It’s that time again! This weekend my wife Anne and I attended the ninth edition of the Indiana Comic Convention at the Indiana Convention Center in scenic downtown Indianapolis. They refrain from calling themselves “Indiana Comic Con” on paper for tiresome legal reasons that aren’t their fault, but to us they’ll always be Indiana Comic Con.

ICC 2023 was another opportunity to look at walls covered with old comics, meet people who create reading matter, boggle at toy displays, respect the anime fandom whose population dwarfs us older generations, and find space to breathe among or away from those cheerfully ever-growing crowds. Although the showrunners reserved less space than they did for last year’s edition — in fact, they moved the show back to the halls where the inaugural edition was held back in 2014 — geek life nevertheless thrived in abundance.

While we recuperate and wait for our feet to forgive us for their punishment, please enjoy this modest collection of cosplayers who brightened the day around the show floor. The jazz-hands photo ops and other obligatory details will be shared in the other chapter. We regret we can only represent a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the total cosplay wonderment that was on display this weekend. We’re just an aging couple doing what we can for happy sharing fun. Enjoy! Corrections welcome for those we misidentified!

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The Ex-Capital Birthday Weekend, Part 10 of 10: An Epilogue of Film, Fowl, and Facades

April 21, 2023 By in Indiana, Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Several dishes on a wood table in a hardwood restaurant. Meal details are described later in the entry.

Welcome to The Eagle! That’s the name of the restaurant, not the main dish.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

In addition to our annual road trips, my wife Anne and I have a twice-yearly tradition of spending our respective birthdays together traveling to some new place or attraction as a short-term road trip — partly as an excuse to spend time together on those most wondrous days, partly to explore areas we’ve never experienced before. We’re the Goldens. It’s who we are and what we do…

Thanks very much to those of you who’ve followed along with my eight previous, glacially posted galleries that comprised our October journey around Indiana’s original state capital Corydon. Whereas the first chapter was a prologue about a donut shop we tried along the way, so too is our epilogue connected to the main storyline only by our timing and our desire to add still more festivities to Anne’s autumn birthday weekend. As a capper, we spent Saturday on Massachusetts Avenue, downtown Indianapolis’ premier upscale restaurant hub. On one end of Mass Ave we planned for lunch; on the other, a film for a special occasion. All told, the meal was better than the movie.

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The Ex-Capital Birthday Weekend, Part 9 of 10: Indiana Caverns on $0.00 a Day

April 17, 2023 By in Indiana, Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
A wood-carved saber-toothed tiger situated on the front porch of the Indiana Caverns gift shop.

The wood-carved saber-toothed tiger welcomes you!

Our Friday in and around Corydon was fun, but not every stop on our to-do list worked out as hoped. Some attractions are simply more doable in the morning than in the afternoon. The longer the day goes on, the longer their guest list grows and the longer you might have to wait your turn. You can either be patient and invest the extra time needed, or bow out gracefully and don’t grouse about the minutes you’ve blown in vain, especially when that’s technically your own fault.

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The Ex-Capital Birthday Weekend, Part 8 of 10: The Battle Cabin in the Woods

March 25, 2023 By in Indiana, Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
A log cabin in the woods with some (unseen) history to it.

No, this isn’t one of the 600 different Midwest historical sites with ties to Abraham Lincoln.

In our road trips of recent vintage we’ve been adding American battlefields to our itineraries on behalf of Anne the history aficionado. Longtime MCC readers may or may not recall our previous stops at the former war zones of Antietam, Gettysburg, Saratoga Springs, Chickamauga, Tippecanoe, and Stones River. Some battlefields are larger and more important than others, but each one has support from dedicated historians keeping their memories and lessons alive.

As it happens, our own state of Indiana had exactly one (1) Civil War battle fought within our boundaries. As a Hoosier might expect, of course the aggressors came up from Kentucky.

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The Ex-Capital Birthday Weekend, Part 7 of 10: William Henry Harrison Slept Here

March 21, 2023 By in Indiana, Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
A two-story log cabin that used to be various businesses but is now an old-timey museum.

I’ve run across a few websites that think the building once known as Branham Tavern is still a working tavern to this day. Whoops!

I’ve never thought of President William Henry Harrison as one of this blog’s patron saints, but in prepping this entry, it dawned on me that we’ve name-checked him enough times in our travels to make our own clipfest. We’ve run across representations and mementos from his life in several attractions to date:

Admittedly we blew our chance to collect a complete set when we visited Vincennes in 2020 and failed to stop by Grouseland, his old mansion. As I recall it was closed at the time of our visit for renovation and/or pandemic. Maybe we’ll rectify that omission next time we’re in the area. In the meantime, our visit to Corydon added another of his previous residences to our veritable Ninth President Collectors’ Checklist, not that we consciously keep one.

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The Ex-Capital Birthday Weekend, Part 6 of 10: Cozy Corydon Cuisine

January 10, 2023 By in Indiana, Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Open-faced meatloaf sandwich on a wooden table in noonday sunlight. See caption.

An open-faced meat loaf sandwich made from ground beef and duck, wrapped in bacon, served on sourdough, doused in bourbon brown gravy, and topped with white American cheese, greens, and fried leeks a la Skyrim.

Of course there’s a chapter for the good foods we found. The gallery is a quickie that could’ve been squeezed into one of the other chapters, but then that chapter would’ve been too long, you wouldn’t have clicked on it, and you’d have missed more cute pics of my wife who’s perfectly happy being 52 now.

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The Ex-Capital Birthday Weekend, Part 5 of 10: Hooked on Butt Drugs

December 27, 2022 By in Indiana, Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Butt Drugs' storefront. Yes, their actual name.

Corydon’s own Butt Drugs is easy to get to, if you do as we did and park in the rear.

Every Indiana town above a certain size has large corporations trying to muscle in on their homegrown businesses and industries. Corydon has CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart servicing anyone’s prescription needs, same as we do here in the big city. Their residents have one convenient pill-vending option we don’t: anytime they want, they can go hit Butt Drugs.

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A Stack of Cross-Cuts from Indy’s Festival of Trees 2022

December 18, 2022 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
me doing jazz hands next to "A Christmas Story" replica leg lamp.

Me with a major award.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Every year the Indiana Historical Society in downtown Indianapolis hosts a special Christmas exhibit called the Festival of Trees, for which dozens of local businesses and charities festoon a tree or tree-shaped object with decorations befitting their interests and colors. A few days after Thanksgiving this year, my coworkers and I decided to make that time and sauntered over there on our lunch break…

I took enough pics for two MCC entries’ worth of Christmas trees, plus a handful of non-tree Christmas decorations as well as a few glimpses at the Historical Society’s year-round environs. Sadly I overlooked their Elf on the Shelf that was round there somewhere, and our visit was too early to catch its pal the Mensch on a Bench (yes, really), who only shows up for Hanukkah.

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Walking in a Christmas Tree Forest: Indy’s Festival of Trees 2022

December 15, 2022 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Me doing jazz hands in the little hall cut through the middle of a 30-foot Christmas tree.

Having a holly jolly Christmas under a 30-foot tree.

Every year the Indiana Historical Society in downtown Indianapolis hosts a special Christmas exhibit called the Festival of Trees, for which dozens of local businesses and charities festoon a tree or tree-shaped object with decorations befitting their interests and colors. Anne and I have been meaning to check out the Historical Society (with or without a holiday-based excuse) but kept failing to make time. A few days after Thanksgiving this year, my coworkers and I decided to make that time and sauntered over there on our lunch break. Anne doesn’t work downtown or at my company and therefore sadly wasn’t included in our field trip, but I took photos to share with her and with You, The Viewers at Home.

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